Nintendo has announced the winners of its Labo Creators Contest, with the top-ranking entries including a coin-operated sweet dispenser, a teashop time-management game, and, delightfully, a solar-driven accordion.

Nintendo's inaugural Labo contest launched in April, with the goal of finding the "greatest Nintendo Labo creations and customisations". Three categories were open for submissions (Best Decorated Toy-Con, Best Toy-Con Mod Using Toy-Con Garage, and Best Original Invention Using Toy-Con Garage) and the three best entries in each have now been chosen.

Top entries for the Best Decorated Toy-Con category, which set players the task of dolling up their creations using "any craft materials you choose, as long as the Toy-Con creation still functions properly", include a diminutive cardboard treehouse, a Labo T. rex, and this elaborate Zelda-themed piano - complete with korok, diorama, and removable Master Sword.

As you might expect, entries in the Best Toy-Con Mod Using Toy-Con Garage category are a little bit more involved, drawing on the flexibility of Labo's surprisingly capable programming tools. These include a Bop-It-like game in which you're tasked with twisting and shaking Labo as instructed to score points, as well as a home-repair-themed game of rapid responses.

Taking things in a more practical direction, however, is the Labo alarm clock. This elaborate entry, which even features an analogue-style clock face, can be set by inserting different physical knobs into the device and twisting them to wind the clock forward.

Last but not least is the Best Original Invention Using Toy-Con Garage, which features some very impressive entries. These include a motion-controlled teashop time-management game, in which four tea pots fashioned out of card must be manipulated and poured as quickly as possible in order to satisfy the demands of customers and score points.

Don't Break the Line is another nifty game, this time started by inserting a coin. To play, you shift a lever up and down through one of three positions to catch a line as it races across the screen. Win, and you're awarded a handful of sweets for your efforts (and cold, hard cash).

Most elaborate of all, though, is the solar-driven accordion, which uses the Joy-Con's IR functionality to check if sunlight can be seen through finger-holes then generates the correct, corresponding notes. There's also a second Joy-Con reading the device's rotation - the bigger the tilt, the louder the sound - and finally, touch inputs via the screen which can adjust the octave that the accordion plays. All of which looks something like this:

Following the success of its first Labo Creators Contest, Nintendo recently announced a second competition, which runs from July 19th to August 20th. There are different requirements depending on your region, with Nintendo of America asking for submissions for two new categories: Best Toy-Con Musical Instrument and Best Gaming Experience using Toy-Con Garage. Nintendo Europe, meanwhile, is looking for entries that fall under three, rather less specific groupings: Creations, Customisations, and Kids.

As well as the ever-popular premature burial, every writer of shock/suspense tales should write at least one story about the Ghostly Room At The Inn. This is my version of that story. The only unusual thing about it is that I never intended to finish it. I wrote the first three or four pages as part of an appendix for my On Writing book, wanting to show readers how a story evolves from first draft to second. Most of all, I wanted to provide concrete examples of the principles I'd been blathering about in the text. But something nice happened: the story seduced me, and I ended up writing all of it. I think that what scares us varies widely from one individual to the next (I've never been able to understand why Peruvian boomslangs give some people the creeps, for example), but this story scared me while I was working on it. It originally appeared as part of an audio compilation called Blood and Smoke, and the audio scared me even more. Scared the hell out of me. But hotel rooms are just naturally creepy places, don't you think? I mean, how many people have slept in that bed before you? How many of them were sick? How many were losing their minds? How many were perhaps thinking about reading a few final verses from the Bible in the drawer of the nightstand beside them and then hanging themselves in the closet beside the TV? Brrrr. In any case, let's check in, shall we? Here's your key... and you might take time to notice what those four innocent numbers add up to. It's just down the hall.

1

Mike Enslin was still in the revolving door when he saw Olin, the manager of the Hotel Dolphin, sitting in one of the overstuffed lobby chairs. Mike's heart sank. Maybe I should have brought the lawyer along again, after all, he thought. Well, too late now. And even if Olin had decided to throw up another roadblock or two between Mike and room 1408, that wasn't all bad; there were compensations.

Olin was crossing the room with one pudgy hand held out as Mike left the revolving door. The Dolphin was on Sixty-first Street, around the corner from Fifth Avenue, small but smart. A man and a woman dressed in evening clothes passed Mike as he reached for Olin's hand, switching his small overnight case to his left hand in order to do it. The woman was blond, dressed in black, of course, and the light, flowery smell of her perfume seemed to summarize New York. On the mezzanine level, someone was playing "Night and Day" in the bar, as if to underline the summary.

"Mr. Enslin. Good evening."

"Mr. Olin. Is there a problem?"

Olin looked pained. For a moment he glanced around the small, smart lobby, as if for help. At the concierge's stand, a man was discussing theater tickets with his wife while the concierge himself watched them with a small, patient smile. At the front desk, a man with the rumpled look one only got after long hours in Business Class was discussing his reservation with a woman in a smart black suit that could itself have doubled for evening wear. It was business as usual at the Hotel Dolphin. There was help for everyone except poor Mr. Olin, who had fallen into the writer's clutches.

"Mr. Olin?" Mike repeated.

"Mr. Enslin... could I speak to you for a moment in my office?"

Well, and why not? It would help the section on room 1408, add to the ominous tone the readers of his books seemed to crave, and that wasn't all. Mike Enslin hadn't been sure until now, in spite of all the backing and filling; now he was. Olin was really afraid of room 1408, and of what might happen to Mike there tonight.

"Of course, Mr. Olin."

Olin, the good host, reached for Mike's bag. "Allow me."

"I'm fine with it," Mike said. "Nothing but a change of clothes and a toothbrush."

The hotel manager had seemed tentative in the lobby, almost beaten. In his oak-paneled office, with the pictures of the hotel on the walls (the Dolphin had opened in 19190-- Mike might publish without the benefit of reviews in the journals or the big-city papers, but he did his research), Olin seemed to gain assurance again. There was a Persian carpet on the floor. Two standing lamps cast a mild yellow light. A desk-lamp with a green lozenge-shaped shade stood on the desk, next to a humidor. And next to the humidor were Mike Enslin's last three books. Paperback editions, of course; there had been no hardbacks. Mine host has been doing a little research of his own, Mike thought.

Mike sat down in front of the desk. He expected Olin to sit behind the desk, but Olin surprised him. He took the chair beside Mike's, crossed his legs, then leaned forward over his tidy little belly to touch the humidor.

"Cigar, Mr. Enslin?"

"No, thank you. I don't smoke."

Olin's eyes shifted to the cigarette behind Mike's right ear-- parked on a jaunty jut the way an old-time wisecracking reporter might have parked his next smoke just below the PRESS tag stuck in the band of his fedora. The cigarette had become so much a part of him that for a moment Mike honestly didn't know what Olin was looking at. Then he laughed, took it down, looked at it himself, and looked back at Olin.

"Haven't had a one in nine years," he said. "Had an older brother who died of lung cancer. I quit after he died. The cigarette behind the ear..." He shrugged. "Part affectation, part superstition, I guess. Like the Hawaiian shirt. Or the cigarettes you sometimes see on people's desks or walls, mounted in a little box with a sign saying BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. Is 1408 a smoking room, Mr. Olin? Just in case nuclear war breaks out?"

"As a matter of fact, it is."

"Well," Mike said heartily, "that's one less worry in the watches of the night."

Mr. Olin sighed again, but this sigh didn't have the disconsolate quality of his lobby-sigh. Yes, it was the office, Mike reckoned. Olin's office, his special place. Even this afternoon, when Mike had come accompanied by Robertson, the lawyer, Olin had seemed less flustered once they were in here. And why not? Where else could you feel in charge, if not in your special place? Olin's office was a room with good pictures on the walls, a good rug on the floor, and good cigars in the humidor. A lot of managers had no doubt conducted a lot of business in here since 110; in its own way it was as New York as the blond in her black off-the-shoulder dress, her smell of perfume and her unarticulated promise of sleek New York sex in the small hours of the morning.

"You still don't think I can talk you out of this idea of yours, do you?" Olin asked.

"I know you can't," Mike said, replacing the cigarette behind his ear. He didn't slick his hair back with Vitalis or Wildroot Cream Oil, as those colorful fedora-wearing scribblers of yore had, but he still changed the cigarette every day, just as he changed his underwear. You sweat back there behind your ears; if he examined the cigarette at the end of the day before throwing its unsmoked deadly length into the toilet, Mike could see the faint yellow-orange residue of that sweat on the thin white paper. It did not increase the temptation to light up. How he had smoked for almost twenty years-thirty butts a day, sometimes forty-was now beyond him. Why he had done it was an even better question.

Olin picked up the little stack of paperbacks from the blotter. "I sincerely hope you're wrong."

Mike ran open the zipper on the side pocket of his overnight bag. He brought out a Sony minicorder. "Would you mind if I taped our conversation, Mr. Olin?"

Olin waved a hand. Mike pushed RECORD and the little red light came on. The reels began to turn.

Olin, meanwhile, was shuffling slowly through the stack of books, reading the titles. As always when he saw his books in someone else's hands, Mike Enslin felt the oddest mix of emotions: pride, unease, amusement, defiance, and shame. He had no business feeling ashamed of them, they had kept him nicely over these last five years, and he didn't have to share any of the profits with a packager ("book-whores" was what his agent called them, perhaps partly in envy), because he had come up with the concept himself. Although after the first book had sold so well, only a moron could have missed the concept. What was there to do after Frankenstein but Bride of Frankenstein?

Still, he had gone to Iowa. He had studied with Jane Smiley. He had once been on a panel with Stanley Elkin. He had once aspired (absolutely no one in his current circle of friends and acquaintances had any least inkling of this) to be published as a Yale Younger Poet. And, when the hotel manager began speaking the titles aloud, Mike found himself wishing he hadn't challenged Olin with the recorder. Later he would listen to Olin's measured tones and imagine he heard contempt in them. He touched the cigarette behind his ear without being aware of it.

"Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses," Olin read. "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards. Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Castles." He looked up at Mike with a faint smile at the corners of his mouth. "Got to Scotland on that one. Not to mention the Vienna Woods. And all tax-deductible, correct? Hauntings are, after all, your business."

"No, not at all. I was curious, that's all. I sent Marcel-he's the concierge on days-out to get them two days ago, when you first appeared with your... request."

"It was a demand, not a request. Still is. You heard Mr. Robertson; New York State law-not to mention two federal civil rights laws-forbids you to deny me a specific room, if I request that specific room and the room is vacant. And 1408 is vacant. 1408 is always vacant these days."

But Mr. Olin was not to be diverted from the subject of Mike's last three books-- New York Times bestsellers, all-just yet. He simply shuffled through them a third time. The mellow lamplight reflected off their shiny covers. Purple sold scary books better than any other color, Mike had been told.

"I didn't get a chance to dip into these until earlier this evening," Olin said. "I've been quite busy. I usually am. The Dolphin is small by New York standards, but we run at ninety per cent occupancy and usually a problem comes through the front door with every guest."

"Like me."

Olin smiled a little. "I'd say you're a bit of a special problem, Mr. Enslin. You and your Mr. Robertson and all your threats."

Mike felt nettled all over again. He had made no threats, unless Robertson himself was a threat. And he had been forced to use the lawyer, as a man might be forced to use a crowbar on a rusty lockbox which would no longer accept the key.

The lockbox isn't yours, a voice inside told him, but the laws of the state and the country said differently. The laws said that room 1408 in the Hotel Dolphin was his if he wanted it, and as long as no one else had it first.

He became aware that Olin was watching him, still with that faint smile. As if he had been following Mike's interior dialogue almost word for word. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and Mike was finding this an unexpectedly uncomfortable meeting. It felt as if he had been on the defensive ever since he'd taken out the minicorder (which actually was intimidating) and turned it on.

"If any of this has a point, Mr. Olin, I'm afraid I lost sight of it a turn or two back. And I've had a long day. If our wrangle over room 1408 is really over, I'd like to go on upstairs and-"

"I read one... uh, what would you call them? Essays? Tales?"

Bill-payers was what Mike called them, but he didn't intend to say that with the tape running. Not even though it was his tape.

"Story," Olin decided. "I read one story from each book. The one about the Rilsby house in Kansas from your Haunted Houses book-"

"Ah, yes. The axe murders." The fellow who had chopped up all six members of the Eugene Rilsby family had never been caught.

"Exactly so. And the one about the night you spent camped out on the graves of the lovers in Alaska who committed suicide-the ones people keep claiming to see around Sitka-and the account of your night in Gartsby Castle. That was actually quite amusing. I was surprised."

Mike's ear was carefully tuned to catch the undernotes of contempt in even the blandest comments about his Ten Nights books, and he had no doubt that he sometimes heard contempt that wasn't there-few creatures on earth are so paranoid as the writer who believes, deep in his heart, that he is slumming, Mike had discovered-but he didn't believe there was any contempt here.

"Thank you," he said. "I guess." He glanced down at his minicorder. Usually its little red eye seemed to be watching the other guy, daring him to say the wrong thing. This evening it seemed to be looking at Mike himself.

"Oh yes, I meant it as a compliment." Olin tapped the books. "I expect to finish these... but for the writing. It's the writing I like. I was surprised to find myself laughing at your quite unsupernatural adventures in Gartsby Castle, and I was surprised to find you as good as you are. As subtle as you are. I expected more hack and slash."

Mike steeled himself for what would almost certainly come next, Olin's variation of What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this. Olin the urbane hotelier, host to blond women who wore black dresses out into the night, hirer of weedy, retiring men who ware tuxes and tinkled old standards like "Night and Day" in the hotel bar. Olin who probably read Proust on his nights off.

"But they are disturbing, too, these books. If I hadn't looked at them, I don't think I would have bothered waiting for you this evening. Once I saw that lawyer with his briefcase, I knew you meant to stay in the goddamned room, and that nothing I could say was apt to dissuade you. But the books..."

Mike reached out and snapped off the minicorder-that little red eye was starting to give him the willies. "Do you want to know why I'm bottom-feeding? Is that it?"

"I assume you do it for the money," Olin said mildly. "And you're feeding a long way from the bottom, at least in my estimation... although it's interesting that you would jump so nimbly to such a conclusion."

Mike felt warmth rising in his cheeks. No, this wasn't going the way he had expected at all; he had never snapped his recorder off in the middle of a conversation. But Olin wasn't what he had seemed. I was led astray by his hands, Mike thought. Those pudgy little hotel manager's hands with their neat white crescents of manicured nail.

"What concerned me-what frightened me-is that I found myself reading the work of an intelligent, talented man who doesn't believe one single thing he has written."

That wasn't exactly true, Mike thought. He'd written perhaps two dozen stories he believed in, had actually published a few. He'd written reams of poetry he believed in during his first eighteen months in New York, when he had starved on the payroll of The Village Voice. But did he believe that the headless ghost of Eugene Rilsby walked his deserted Kansas farmhouse by moonlight? No. He had spent the night in that farmhouse, camped out on the dirty linoleum hills of the kitchen floor, and had seen nothing scarier than two mice trundling along the baseboard. He had spent a hot summer night in the ruins of the Transylvanian castle where Vlad Tepes supposedly still held court; the only vampires to actually show up had been a fog of European mosquitoes. During the night camped out by the grave of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a white, blood-streaked figure waving a knife had come at him out of the two o'clock darkness, but the giggles of the apparition's friends had given him away, and Mike Enslin hadn't been terribly impressed, anyway; he knew a teenage ghost waving a rubber knife when he saw one. But he had no intention of telling nay of this to Olin. He couldn't afford-

Except he could. The minicorder (a mistake from the getgo, he now understood) was stowed away again, and this meeting was about as off-the-record as you could get. Also, he had come to admire Olin in a weird way. And when you admired a man, you wanted to tell him the truth.

"No," he said, "I don't believe in ghoulies and ghosties and long leggety beasties. I think it's good there are no such things, because I don't believe there's any good Lord that can protect us from them, either. That's what I believe, but I've kept an open mind from the very start. I may never win the Pulitzer Prize for investigating The Barking Ghost in Mount Hope Cemetery, but I would have written fairly about him if he had shown up."

Olin said something, only a single word, but too low for Mike to make it out.

"I beg pardon?"

"I said no." Olin looked at him almost apologetically.

Mike sighed. Olin thought he was a liar. When you got to that point, the only choices were to put up your dukes or disengage totally from the discussion. "Why don't we leave this for another day, Mr. Olin? I'll just go on upstairs and brush my teeth. Perhaps I'll see Kevin O'Malley materialize behind me in the bathroom mirror."

Mike started to get out of his chair, and Olin put out one of his pudgy, carefully manicured hands to stop him. "I'm not calling you a liar," he said, "but, Mr. Enslin, you don't believe. Ghosts rarely appear to those who don't believe in them, and when they do, they are rarely seen. Why, Eugene Rilsby could have bowled his severed head all the way down the front hall of his home, and you wouldn't have heard a thing!"

Mike stood up, then bent to grab his overnight case. "If that's so, I won't have anything to worry about in room 1408, will I?"

"But you will," Olin said. "You will. Because there are no ghosts in room 1408 and never have been. There's something in there-I've felt it myself-but it's not a spirit presence. In an abandoned house or an old castle keep, your unbelief may serve you as protection. In room 1408, it will only render you more vulnerable. Don't do it, Mr. Enslin. That's why I waited for you tonight, to ask you, beg you, not to do it. Of all the people on earth who don't belong in that room, the man who wrote those cheerful, exploitative true-ghost books leads the list."

Mike heard this and didn't hear it at the same time. And you turned off your tape recorder! he was raving. He embarrasses me into turning off my tape recorder and then he turns into Boris Karloff hosting the All-Star Spook Weekend! Fuck it. I'll quote him anyway. If he doesn't like it, let him sue me.

All at once he was burning to get upstairs, not just so he could start getting his long night in a corner hotel room over with, but because he wanted to transcribe what Olin had just said while it was still fresh in his mind.

"Have a drink, Mr. Enslin."

"No, I really-"

Mr. Olin reached into his coat pocket and brought out a key on a long brass paddle. The brass looked old and scratched and tarnished. Embossed on it were the numbers 1408. "Please," Olin said. "Humor me. You give me ten more minutes of your time-long enough to consume a short Scotch-and I'll hand you this key. I would give almost anything to be able to change your mind, but I like to think I can recognize the inevitable when I see it."

"The Dolphin went to a MagCard system in 1979, Mr. Enslin, the year I took the job as manager. 1408 is the only room in the house that still opens with a key. There was no need to put a MagCard lock on its door, because there's never anyone inside; the room was last occupied by a paying guest in 1978."

"You're shitting me!" Mike sat down again, and unlimbered his minicorder again. He pushed the RECORD button and said, "House manager Olin claims 1408 not rented to a paying guest in over twenty years."

"It is just as well that 1408 has never needed a MagCard lock on its door, because I am completely positive the device wouldn't work. Digital wristwatches don't work in room 1408. Sometimes they run backward, sometimes they simply go out, but you can't tell time with one. Not in room 1408, you can't. The same is true of pocket calculators and cellphones. If you're wearing a beeper, Mr. Enslin, I advise you to turn it off, because once you're in room 1408, it will start beeping at will." He paused. "And turning it off isn't guaranteed to work, either; it may turn itself back on. The only sure cure is to pull the batteries." He pushed the STOP button on the minicorder without examining the buttons; Mike supposed he used a similar model for dictating memos. "Actually, Mr. Enslin, the only sure cure is to stay the hell out of that room."

"I can't do that," Mike said, taking his minicorder back and stowing it once more, "but I think I can take time for that drink."

* * * * *

While Olin poured from the fumed-oak bar beneath an oil painting of Fifth Avenue at the turn of the century, Mike asked him how, if the room had been continuously unoccupied since 1978, Olin knew that high-tech gadgets didn't work inside.

"I didn't intend to give you the impression that no one had set foot through the door since 1978," Olin replied. "For one thing, there are maids in once a month to give the place a light turn. That means-"

Mike, who had been working on Ten Haunted Hotel Rooms for about four months at that point, said: "I know what it means." A light turn in an unoccupied room would include opening the windows to change the air, dusting, enough Ty-D-Bowl in the can to turn the water briefly bowl, a change of the towels. Probably not the bed-linen, not on a light turn. He wondered if he should have brought his sleeping-bag.

Crossing the Persian from the bar with their drinks in his hands, Olin seemed to read Mike's thought on his face. "The sheets were changed this very afternoon, Mr. Enslin."

"And you." Mike lifted his glass, meaning to click it against Olin's, but Olin pulled his back.

"No, to you, Mr. Enslin. I insist. Tonight we should both drink to you. You'll need it."

Mike sighed, clinked the rim of his glass against the rim of Olin's, and said: "To me. You would have been right at home in a horror movie, Mr. Olin. You could have played the gloomy old butler who tries to warn the young married couple way from Castle Doom."

Olin sat down. "It's a part I haven't had to play often, thank God. Room 1408 isn't listed on any of the websites dealing with paranormal locations or psychic hotspots-"

That'll change after my book, Mike thought, sipping his drink.

"-and there are no ghost-tours with stops at the Hotel Dolphin, although they do tour through the Sherry-Netherland, the Plaza, and the Park Lane. We have kept 1408 as quiet as possible... although, of course, the history has always been there for a researcher who is both lucky and tenacious."

Mike allowed himself a small smile.

"Veronique changed the sheets," Olin said. "I accompanied her. You should feel flattered, Mr. Enslin; it's almost like having your night's linen put on by royalty. Veronique and her sister came to the Dolphin as chambermaids in 1971 or '72. Vee, as we call her, is the Hotel Dolphin's longest-running employee, with at least six years' seniority over me. She has since risen to head housekeeper. I'd guess she hadn't changed a sheet in six years before today, but she used to do all the turns in 1408-she and her sister-until about 1992. Veronique and Celeste were twins, and the bond between them seemed to make them... how shall I put it? Not immune to 1408, but its equal... at least for the short periods of time needed to give a room a light turn."

"You're not going to tell me this Veronique's sister died in the room, are you?"

"No, not at all," Olin said. "She left service here around 1988, suffering from ill health. But I don't rule out the idea that 1408 may have played a part in her worsening mental and physical condition."

"We seem to have built a rapport here, Mr. Olin. I hope I don't snap it by telling you I find that ridiculous."

Olin laughed. "So hardheaded for a student of the airy world."

"I owe it to my readers," Mike said blandly.

"I suppose I simply could have left 1408 as it is anyway during most of its days and nights," the hotel manager mused. "Door locked, lights off, shades drawn to keep the sun from fading the carpet, coverlet pulled up, doorknob breakfast menu on the bed... but I can't bear to think of the air getting stuffy and old, like the air in an attic. Can't bear to think of the dust piling up until it's thick and fluffy. What does that make me, persnickety or downright obsessive?"

"It makes you a hotel manager."

"I suppose. In any case, Vee and Cee turned that room-very quick, just in and out-until Cee retired and Vee got her first big promotion. After that, I got other maids to do it in pairs, always picking ones who got on well with each other-"

"Hoping for that bond to withstand the bogies?"

"Hoping for that bond, yes. And you can make fun of the room 1408 bogies as much as you want, Mr. Enslin, but you'll feel them almost at once, of that I'm confident. Whatever there is in that room, it's not shy."

"On many occasions-all that I could manage-I went with the maids, to supervise them." He paused, the added, almost reluctantly, "To pull them out, I suppose, if anything really awful started to happen. Nothing ever did. There were several who had weeping fits, one who had a laughing fit-I don't know why someone laughing out of control should be more frightening than someone sobbing, but it is-and a number who fainted. Nothing too terrible, however. I had time enough over the years to make a few primitive experiments-beepers and cell-phones and such-but nothing too terrible. Thank God." He paused again, then added in a queer, flat tone: "One of them went blind."

"What?"

"She went blind. Rommie Van Gelder, that was. She was dusting the top of the television, and all at once she began to scream. I asked her what was wrong. She dropped her dustrag and put her hands over her eyes and screamed that she was blind... but that she could see the most awful colors. They went away almost as soon as I got her out through the door, and by the time I got her down the hallway to the elevator, her sight had begun to come back."

"Indeed I am not. You know the history of the room, beginning with the suicide of its first occupant."

Mike did. Kevin O'Malley, a sewing machine salesman, had taken his life on October 13, 1910, a leaper who had left a wife and seven children behind.

"Five men and one woman have jumped from that room's single window, Mr. Enslin. Three women and one man have overdosed with pills in that room, two found in bed, two found in the bathroom, one in the tub and one sitting slumped on the toilet. A man hanged himself in the closet in 1970-"

"Perhaps. There was also Randolph Hyde, who slit his wrists, and then cut off his genitals for good measure while he was bleeding to death. That one wasn't erotic asphyxiation. The point is, Mr. Enslin, that if you can't be swayed from your intention by a record of twelve suicides in sixty-eight years, I doubt if the gasps and fibrillations of a few chambermaids will stop you."

Gasps and fibrillations, that's nice, Mike thought, and wondered if he could steal it for the book.

"Few of the pairs who have turned 1408 over the years care to go back more than a few times," Olin said, and finished his drink in a tidy little gulp.

"Except for the French twins."

"Vee and Cee, that's true." Olin nodded.

Mike didn't care much about the maids and their... what had Olin called them? Their gasps and fibrillations. He did feel mildly rankled by Olin's enumeration of the suicides... as if Mike was so thick he had missed, not the fact of them, but their import. Except, really, there was no import. Both Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy had vice presidents named Johnson; the names Lincoln and Kennedy had seven letters; both Lincoln and Kennedy had been elected in years ending in 60. What did all of these coincidences prove? Not a damned thing.

"The suicides will make a wonderful segment for my book," Mike said, "but since the tape recorder is off, I can tell you they amount to what a statistician resource of mine calls 'the cluster effect.' "

"Charles Dickens called it 'the potato effect,' " Olin said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"When Jacob Marley's ghost first speaks to Scrooge, Scrooge tells him he could be nothing but a blob of mustard or a bit of underdone potato."

"Is that supposed to be funny?" Mike asked, a trifle coldly.

"Nothing about this strikes me as funny, Mr. Enslin. Nothing at all. Listen very closely, please. Vee's sister, Celeste, died of a heart attack. At that point, she was suffering mid-stage Alzheimer's, a disease which struck her very early in life."

"Yet her sister is fine and well, according to what you said earlier. An American success story, in fact. As you are yourself, Mr. Olin, from the look of you. Yet you've been in and out of room 1408 how many times? A hundred? Two hundred?"

"For very short periods of time," Olin said. "It's perhaps like entering a room filled with poison gas. If one holds one's breath, one may be all right. I see you don't like that comparison. You no doubt find it overwrought, perhaps ridiculous. Yet I believe it's a good one."

He steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

"It's also possible that some people react more quickly and more violently to whatever lives in that room, just as some people who go scuba-diving are more prone to the bends than others. Over the Dolphin's near-century of operation, the hotel staff has grown ever more aware that 1408 is a poisoned room. It has become part of the house history, Mr. Enslin. No one talks about it, just as no one mentions the fact that here, as in most hotels, the fourteenth floor is actually the thirteenth... but they know it. If all the facts and records pertaining to that room were available, they would tell an amazing story... one more uncomfortable than your readers might enjoy. I should guess, for example, that every hotel in New York has had its suicides, but I would be willing to wager my life that only in the Dolphin have there been a dozen of them in a single room. And leaving Celeste Romandeau aside, what about the natural deaths in 1408? The so-called natural deaths?"

"How many have there been?" The idea of so-called natural deaths in 1408 had never occurred to him.

"Thirty," Olin replied. "Thirty, at least. Thirty that I know of."

"You're lying!" The words were out of his mouth before he could call them back.

"No, Mr. Enslin, I assure you I'm not. Did you really think that we keep that room empty just out of some vapid old wives' superstition or ridiculous New York tradition... the idea, maybe, that every fine old hotel should have at least one unquiet spirit, clanking around in the Suite of Invisible Chains?"

Mike Enslin realized that just such an idea-not articulated but there, just the same-had indeed been hanging around his new Ten Nights book. To hear Olin scoff at it in the irritated tones of a scientist scoffing at a bruja-waving native did nothing to soothe his chagrin.

"We have our superstitions and traditions in the hotel trade, but we don't let them get in the way of our business, Mr. Enslin. There's an old saying in the Midwest, where I broke into the business: 'There are no drafty rooms when the cattlemen are in town.' If we have empties, we fill them. The only exception to that rule I have ever made-and the only talk like this I have ever had-is on account of room 1408, a room on the thirteenth floor whose very numerals add up to thirteen."

Olin looked levelly at Mike Enslin.

"It is a room not only of suicides but of strokes and heart attacks and epileptic seizures. One man who stayed in that room-this was in 1973-apparently drowned in a bowl of soup. You would undoubtedly call that ridiculous, but I spoke to the man who was head of hotel security at the time, and he saw the death certificate. The power of whatever inhabits that room seems to be less around midday, which is when the room-turns always occur, and yet I know of several maids who have turned that room who now suffer from heart problems, emphysema, diabetes. There was a heating problem on that floor three years ago, and Mr. Neal, the head maintenance engineer at the time, had to go into several of the rooms to check the heating units. 1408 was one of them. He seemed fine then-both in the room and later on-but he died the following afternoon of a massive cerebral hemorrhage."

"Coincidence," Mike said. Yet he could not deny that Olin was good. Had the man been a camp counselor, he would have scared ninety per cent of the kiddies back home after the first round of campfire ghost stories.

"Coincidence," Olin repeated softly, not quite contemptuously. He held out the old-fashioned key on its old-fashioned brass paddle. "How is your own heart, Mr. Enslin? Not to mention your blood-pressure and psychological condition?"

Mike found it took an actual, conscious effort to lift his hand... but once he got it moving, it was fine. It rose to the key without even the minutest trembling at the fingertips, so far as he could see.

Olin insisted on accompanying Mike to the fourteenth floor in the elevator, and Mike did not demur. He was interested to see that, once they were out of the manager's office and walking down the hall which led to the elevators, the man reverted to his less consequential self; he became once again poor Mr. Olin, the flunky who had fallen into the writer's clutches.

A man in a tux-Mike guessed he was either the restaurant manager or the maitre d'-stopped them, offered Olin a thin sheaf of papers, and murmured to him in French. Olin murmured back, nodding, and quickly scribbled his signature on the sheets. The fellow in the bar was now playing "Autumn in New York." From this distance, it had an echoey sound, like music heard in a dream.

The man in the tuxedo said "Merci bien" and went on his way. Mike and the hotel manager went on theirs. Olin again asked if he could carry Mike's little valise, and Mike again refused. In the elevator, Mike found his eyes drawn to the neat triple row of buttons. Everything was where it should have been, there were no gaps... and yet, if you looked more closely, you saw that there was. The button marked 12 was followed by the one marked 14. As if, Mike thought, they could make the number nonexistent by omitting it from the control-panel of an elevator. Foolishness... and yet Olin was right; it was done all over the world.

As the car rose, Mike said, "I'm curious about something. Why didn't you simply create a fictional resident for room 1408, if it scares you all as badly as you say it does? For that matter, Mr. Olin, why not declare it as your own residence?"

"I suppose I was afraid I would be accused of fraud, if not by the people responsible for enforcing state and federal civil rights statues-hotel people feel about civil rights laws as many of your readers probably feel about clanking chains in the night-then by my bosses, if they got wind of it. If I couldn't persuade you to stay out of 1408, I doubt that I would have had much more luck in convincing the Stanley Corporation's board of directors that I took a perfectly good room off the market because I was afraid that spooks cause the occasional traveling salesman to jump out the window and splatter himself all over Sixty-first Street."

Mike found this the most disturbing thing Olin had said yet. Because he's not trying to convince me anymore, he thought. Whatever salesmanship powers he had in this office-maybe it's some vibe that comes up from the Persian rug-he loses it out here. Competency, yes, you could see that when he was signing the maitre d's chits, but not salesmanship. Not personal magnetism. Not out here. But he believes it. He believes it all.

Above the door, the illuminated 12 went out and the 14 came on. The elevator stopped. The door slid open to reveal a perfectly ordinary hotel corridor with a red-and-gold carpet (most definitely not a Persian) and electric fixtures that looked like nineteenth-century gaslights.

"Here we are," Olin said. "Your floor. You'll pardon me if I leave you here. 1408 is to your left, at the end of the hall. Unless I absolutely have to, I don't go any closer than this."

Mike Enslin stepped out of the elevator on legs that seemed heavier than they should have. He turned back to Olin, a pudgy little man in a black coat and a carefully knotted wine-colored tie. Olin's manicured hands were clasped behind him now, and Mike saw that the little man's face was as pale as cream. On his high, lineless forehead, drops of perspiration stood out.

"There's a telephone in the room, of course," Olin said. "You could try it, if you find yourself in trouble... but I doubt that it will work. Not if the room doesn't want it to."

Mike thought of a light reply, something about how that would save him a room-service charge at least, but all at once his tongue seemed as heavy as his legs. It just lay there on the floor of his mouth.

Olin brought one hand out from behind his back, and Mike saw it was trembling. "Mr. Enslin," he said. "Mike. Don't do this. For God's sake-"

Before he could finish, the elevator door slid shut, cutting him off. Mike stood where he was for a moment, in the perfect New York hotel silence of what no one on the staff would admit was the thirteenth floor of the Hotel Dolphin, and thought of reaching out and pushing the elevator's call-button.

Except if he did that, Olin would win. And there would be a large, gaping hole where the best chapter of his new book should have been. The readers might not know that, his editor and his agent might not know it, Robertson the lawyer might not... but he would.

Instead of pushing the call-button, he reached up and touched the cigarette behind his ear-that old, distracted gesture he no longer knew he was making-and flicked the collar of his lucky shirt. Then he started down the hallway toward 1408, swinging his overnight case by his side.

II

The most interesting artifact left in the wake of Michael Enslin's brief stay (it lasted about seventy minutes) in room 1408 was the eleven minutes of recorded tape in his minicorder, which was charred a bit but not even close to destroyed. The fascinating thing about the narration was how little narration there was. And how odd it became.

The minicorder had been a present from his ex-wife, with whom he had remained friendly, five years before. On his first "case expedition" (the Rilsby farm in Kansas) he had taken it almost as an afterthought, along with five yellow legal pads and a leather case filled with sharpened pencils. By the time he reached the door of room 1408 in the Hotel Dolphin three books later, he came with a single pen and notebook, plus five fresh ninety-minute cassettes in addition to the one he had loaded into the machine before leaving his apartment.

He had discovered that narration served him better than note-taking; he was able to catch anecdotes, some of them pretty damned great, as they happened -- the bats that had dive-bombed him in the supposedly haunted tower of Gartsby Castle, for instance. He had shrieked like a girl on her first trip through a carny haunted house. Friends hearing this were invariably amused.

The little tape recorder was more practical than written notes, too, especially when you were in a chilly New Brunswick graveyard and a squall of rain and wind collapsed your tent at three in the morning. You couldn't take very successful notes in such circumstances, but you could talk... which was what Mike had done, gone on talking as he struggled out of the wet, flapping canvas of his tent, never losing sight of the minicorder's comforting red eye. Over the years and the "case expeditions," the Sony minicorder had become his friend. He had never recorded a first-hand account of a true supernatural event on the filament-thin ribbon of tape running between the reels, and that included the broken comments he made while in 1408, but it was probably not surprising that he had arrived at such feelings of affection for the gadget. Long-haul truckers come to love their Kenworths and Jimmy-Petes; writers treasure a certain pen or battered old typewriter; professional cleaning ladies are loath to give up the old Electrolux. Mike had never had to stand up to an actual ghost or psychokinetic event with only the minicorder -- his version of a cross and a bunch of garlic -- to protect him, but it had been there on plenty of cold, uncomfortable nights. He was hardheaded, but that didn't make him inhuman.

His problems with 1408 started even before he got into the room.

The door was crooked.

Not by a lot, but it was crooked, all right, canted just the tiniest bit to the left. It made him think first of scary movies where the director tried to indicate mental distress in one of the characters by tipping the camera on the point-of-view shots. This association was followed by another one -- the way doors looked when you were on a boat and the weather was a little heavy. Back and forth they went, right and left they went, tick and tock they went, until you started to feel a bit woozy in your head and stomach. Not that he felt that way himself, not at all, but --

Yes, I do. Just a little.

And he would say so, too, if only because of Olin's insinuation that his attitude made it impossible for him to be fair in the undoubtedly subjective field of spook journalism.

He bent over (aware that the slightly woozy feeling in his stomach left as soon as he was no longer looking at that subtly off-kilter door), unzipped the pocket on his overnighter, and took out his minicorder. He pushed RECORD as he straightened up, saw the little red eye go on, and opened his mouth to say, "The door of room 1408 offers it own unique greeting; it appears to have been set crooked, tipped slightly to the left."

He said The door, and that's all. If you listen to the tap, you can hear the words clearly, The door and then the click of the STOP button. Because the door wasn't crooked. It was perfectly straight. Mike turned, looked at the door of 1409 across the hall, then back at the door of 1408. Both doors were the same, white with gold number-plaques and gold doorknobs. Both perfectly straight.

Mike bent, picked up his overnight case with the hand holding the minicorder, moved the key in his other hand towards the lock, then stopped again.

The door was crooked again.

This time it tilted slightly to the right.

"This is ridiculous," Mike murmured, but that woozy feeling had already started in his stomach again. It wasn't just like seasickness, it was seasickness. He had crossed to England on the QE2 a couple of years ago, and one night had been extremely rough. What Mike remembered most clearly was lying on the bed in his stateroom, always on the verge of throwing up and never quite able to do it. And how the feeling of nauseated vertigo got worse if you looked at a doorway... or a table... or a chair... at how they would go back and forth... right and left... tick and tock...

This is Olin's fault, he thought. Exactly what he wants. He built you up for it, buddy. He set you up for it. Man, how he'd laugh if he could see you. How--

His thoughts broke off as he realized Olin very likely could see him. Mike looked back down the corridor toward the elevator, barely noticing that the slightly whoopsy feeling in his stomach left the moment he stopped staring at the door. Above and to the left of the elevators, he saw what he had expected: a closed-circuit camera. One of the house dicks might be looking at it this very moment, and Mike was willing to bet that Olin was right there with him, both of them grinning like apes. Teach him to come in here and start throwing his weight and his lawyer around, Olin says. Lookit him! the security man replies, grinning more widely than ever. White as a ghost himself, and he hasn't even touched the key to the lock yet. You got him, boss! Got him hook, line, and sinker!

Damned if you do, Mike thought. I stayed in the Rilsby house, slept in the room where at least two of them were killed-and I did sleep, whether you believed it or not. I spent a night right next to Jeffrey Dahmer's grave and another two stones over from H.P. Lovecraft's; I brushed my teeth next to the tub where Sir David Smythe supposedly drowned both of his wives. I stopped being scared of campfire stories a long time ago. I'll be damned if you do!

He looked back at the door and the door was straight. He grunted, pushed the key into the lock, and turned it. The door opened. Mike stepped in. The door did not swing slowly shut behind him as he felt for the light switch, leaving him in total darkness (besides, the lights of the apartment building next door shone through the window). He found the switch . When he flicked it, the over head light, enclosed in a collection of dangling crystal ornaments, came on. So did the standing lamp by the desk on the far side of the room.

The window was above this desk, so someone sitting there writing could pause in his work and look out on Sixty-first Street... or jump out on Sixty-first, if the urge so took him. Except-

Mike set down his bag just inside the door, closed the door, and pushed RECORD again. The little red light went on.

"According to Olin, six people have jumped from the window I'm looking at," he said, "but I won't be taking any dives from the fourteenth-excuse me, the thirteenth-- floor of the Hotel Dolphin tonight. There's an iron or steel mesh grille over the outside. Better safe than sorry. 1408 is what you'd call a junior suite, I guess. The room I'm in has two chairs, a sofa, a writing desk, a cabinet that probably contains the TV and maybe a minibar. Carpet on the floor is unremarkable-not a patch on Olin's believe me. Wallpaper, ditto. It... wait..."

At this point the listener hears another click on the tape as Mike hits the STOP button again. All the scant narration on the tape has that same fragmentary quality, which is utterly unlike the other hundred and fifty or so tapes in his literary agent's possession. In addition, his voice grows steadily more distracted; it is not the voice of a man at work, but of a perplexed individual who has begun talking to himself without realizing it. The elliptical nature of the tapes and that growing verbal distraction combine to give most listeners a distinct feeling of unease. Many ask that the tape be turned off long before the end is reached. Mere words on a page cannot adequately convey a listener's growing conviction that he is hearing a man lose, if not his mind, then his hold on conventional reality, but even the flat words themselves suggest that something was happening.

What Mike had noticed at that point were the pictures on the walls. There were three of them: a lady in twenties-style evening dress standing on a staircase, a sailing ship done in the fashion of Currier & Ives, and a still life of fruit, the latter painted with an unpleasant yellow-orange cast to the apples as well as the oranges and bananas. All three pictures were in glass frames and all three were crooked. He had been about to mention the crookedness on tape, but what was so unusual, so worthy of comment, about three off-kilter pictures? That a door should be crooked... well, that had a little of that old Cabinet of Dr. Caligari charm. But the door hadn't been crooked; his eyes had tricked him for a moment, that was all.

The lady on the stairs tilted left. So did the sailing ship, which showed bell-bottomed British tars lining the rail to watch a school of flying fish. The yellowish-orange fruit-to Mike it looked like a bowl of fruit painted by the light of a suffocating equatorial sun, a Paul Bowles desert sun-tilted to the right. Although he was not ordinarily a fussy man, he circled the room, setting them straight. Looking at them crooked like that was making him feel a touch nauseated again. He wasn't entirely surprised, either. One grew susceptible to the feeling; he had discovered that on the QE 2. He had been told that if one persevered through that period of increased susceptibility, one usually adapted... "got your sealegs," some of the old hands still said. Mike hadn't done enough sailing to get his sealegs, nor cared to. These days he stuck with his land legs, and if straightening the three pictures in the unremarkable sitting room of 1408 would settle his midsection, good for him.

There was dust on the glass covering the pictures. He trailed his fingers across the still life and left two parallel streaks. The dust had a greasy, slippery feel. Like silk just before it rots was what came into his mind, but he was damned if he was going to put that on tape, either. How was he supposed to know what silk felt like just before it rotted? It was a drunk's thought.

When the pictures were set to rights, he stepped back and surveyed them in turn: the evening-dressed lady by the door leading into the bedroom, the ship plying one of the seven seas to the left of the writing desk, and finally the nasty (and quite badly painted) fruit by the TV cabinet. Part of him expected that they would be crooked again, or fall crooked as he looked at them-that was the way things happened in movies like House on Haunted Hill and in old episodes of The Twilight Zone--but the pictures remained perfectly straight, as he had fixed them. Not, he told himself, that he would have found anything supernatural or paranormal in a return to their former crooked state; in his experience, reversion was the nature of things-people who had given up smoking (he touched the cigarette cocked behind his ear without being aware of it) wanted to go on smoking, and pictures that had been hanging crooked since Nixon was President wanted to go on hanging crooked. And they've been here a long time, no doubt about that, Mike thought. If I lifted them away from the walls, I'd see lighter patches on the wallpaper. Or bugs squirming out, the way they do when you turn over a rock.

There was something both shocking and nasty about this idea; it came with a vivid image of blind white bugs oozing out of the pale and formerly protected wallpaper like living pus.

Mike raised the minicorder, pushed RECORD, and said: "Olin has certainly started a train of thought in my head. Or a chain of thought, which is it? He set out to give me the heebie-jeebies, and he certainly succeeded. I don't mean..." Didn't mean what? To be racist? Was "heebie-jeebies" short for Hebrew jeebies? But that was ridiculous. That would be "Hebrew-jebrews," a phrase which was meaningless. It-

On the tape at this point, flat and perfectly articulated, Mike Enslin says: "I've got to get hold of myself. Right now." This is followed by another click as he shuts the tape off again.

He closed his eyes and took four long, measured breaths, holding each one in to a five-count before letting it out again. Nothing like this had ever happened to him-not in the supposedly haunted houses, the supposedly haunted graveyards, or the supposedly haunted castles. This wasn't like being haunted, or what he imagined being haunted would be like; this was like being stoned on bad, cheap dope.

Olin did this. Olin hypnotized you, but you're going to break out of it. You're going to spend the goddamned night in this room, and not just because it's the best location you've ever been in-leave out Olin and you've got damned near enough for the ghost story of the decade already-but because Olin doesn't get to win. Him and his bullshit story about how thirty people have died in here, they don't get to win. I'm the one in charge of bullshit around here, so just breathe in... and out. Breathe in... and out. In... and out...

He went on like that for nearly ninety seconds, and when he opened his eyes again, he felt normal. The pictures on the wall? Still straight. Fruit in the bowl? Still yellow-orange and uglier than ever. Desert fruit for sure. Eat one piece of that and you'd shit until it hurt.

He pushed RECORD. The red eye went on. "I had a little vertigo for a minute or two," he said, crossing the room to the writing desk and the window with its protective mesh outside. "It might have been a hangover from Olin's yarning, but I could believe I feel a genuine presence here." He felt no such thing, of course, but once that was on tape he could write almost anything he pleased. "The air is stale. Not musty or foul-smelling, Olin said the place gets aired every time it gets turned, but the turns are quick and... yeah... it's stale. Hey, look at this."

There was an ashtray on the writing desk, one of those little ones made of thick glass that you used to see in hotels everywhere, and in it was a book of matches. On the front was the Hotel Dolphin. In front of the hotel stood a smiling doorman in a very old-fashioned uniform, the kind with shoulder-boards, gold frogging, and a cap that looked as if it belonged in a gay bar, perched on the head of a motorcycle ramrod wearing nothing else but a few silver body-rings. Going back and forth on Fifth Avenue in front of the hotel were cars from another era-Packards and Hudsons, Studebakers and finny Chrysler New Yorkers.

"The matchbook in the ashtray looks like it comes from about 1955," Mike said, and slipped it into the pocket of his lucky Hawaiian shirt. "I'm keeping it as a souvenir. Now it's time for a little fresh air."

There is a clunk as he sets the minicorder down, presumably on the writing desk. There is a pause followed by vague sounds and a couple of effortful grunts. After these come a second pause and then a squeaking sound. "Success!" he says. This is a little off-mike, but the follow-up is closer.

"Success!" Mike repeated, picking the minicorder up off the desk. "The bottom half wouldn't budge... it's like it's nailed shut... but the top half came down all right. I can hear the traffic on Fifth Avenue, and all the beeping horns have a comforting quality. Someone is playing a saxophone, perhaps in front of the Plaza, which is across the street and two blocks down. It reminds me of my brother."

]]>Ebook3000 pdf magazine websitehttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/25769/ebook3000-pdf-magazine-website
Sun, 03 Dec 2017 03:08:28 +1100hicklespickle25769@/forum/discussionsHere is a link to the website Ebook3000. It has a lot of good pdf magazine files:http://ebook3000.com. Here are a ton of links to Full Year collection pdf files:

]]>The ultimate Videogame and Computer Magazine pdf link archivehttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/25763/the-ultimate-videogame-and-computer-magazine-pdf-link-archive
Tue, 28 Nov 2017 07:20:07 +1100hicklespickle25763@/forum/discussionsHere are links to Videogame and Computer Magazine Pdf files on Mediafire as well as many from Archive.org and Retro Cdn and some non videogame magazines. Some of the links from Retro Cdn and the Japanese section of Retromags with the black text at the end won't work if you just click on the link so instead you just have to select all of the text and copy the full link:

I know this is kind of a long shot but does anyone have any of the old episodes of the Community Podcast laying around on their hard drives? I'm talking about the Community Podcast that was done by Fuzzy and someone else (can't remember your name, sorry!). The one episode I'm looking for in particular is Episode 35: The Return of TheBGBB. I've been looking for this episode forever and all I can find on the internet is dead links, so if anyone has it and could upload it I'd be eternally grateful.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope everyone is doing well.

Yow!

]]>Featured Resource 4: AVS Video Editorhttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/20652/featured-resource-4-avs-video-editor
Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:47:46 +1100Lucien_Lachance20652@/forum/discussionsWelcome to the Featured Resource(s), a weekly thread where I put the spotlight on free programs and tutorials to help you make better content. This week's resource is...

Normally I like to put more than one resource in here, but I don't think there's much competition in the area of free video editors. Seriously, what are you going to use, Windows Movie Maker? Fuck that. And don't even think of pirating Vegas or Final Cut, you criminal scum. This is AVS Video Editor, motherfuckers. Check this shit out:

Using AVS Video Editor, you can quickly and easily perform the following tasks:

Got all that? There's gonna be a quiz later. In all seriousness, if you don't have the money for Final Cut or Vegas, your solution is right here. If you're using Movie Maker, don't. Just don't. Why for the love of god are you using that? Use this. Not that. K? Good.

Stay tuned for the next Featured Resource!]]>Where We Dream: My First Feature-Length Scripthttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24838/where-we-dream-my-first-feature-length-script
Fri, 26 Sep 2014 08:51:13 +1000Manio24838@/forum/discussionsI'm not known, or comfortable with writing emotional stuff like this. I'm more into fantasy, and horror. So, I'd like you guys to read it and let me know what you think. Myself, I feel like the pacing is a bit off and the characters are a bit meh. Shows me right for trying to write something emotional, haha. I did make someone cry while they read it, so that feels like a plus. To me atleast.

It's 86 pages, but it would mean the world to me if you guys read it, and left me some comments :)

I live in Canada, and this indie film was possible from people from the United States. I wrote a screenplay and threw it on Reddit in the hopes that someone would be interested in the script, and make the film. They contacted me the same day and production went underway.

I now would like to show you guys my first ever written film/short film project called "Caffeine". It's about a young man who struggles with a severe caffeine addiction.

I’ve developed this really weird habit of developing quick, little games around one type of variable/concept. These have included games like Shadows: The Darkness, Poop Tycoon (a jab at all those damn simulator games) and now The Floor Is Always Lava. I never really intend for these little projects to blossom into anything large, hell most of the time I do them for fun or to kill time while I’m sitting at home on my days off.

That being said, this is probably the one I’m most proud of at this stage. It’s fun, fast-paced, and you can play with some buddies. It pretty much takes the concept, and idea behind that game kids would play in their living-rooms but instead of jumping from various pieces of furniture, you’re standing in a room that’s quickly filling up with lava. It’s essentially a last-man standing sort of idea. I’ll probably look into adding more features sometime down the road (more maps, achievements, better visuals, etc) but for now it’s more of a concept test/tech demo in a sense.

Anyways, I just pushed the full release out on the IndieDB page, but it’s still waiting to verify. For the time being you can download the files from here. Installation instructions are below if you’re having issues.

That being said, I hope it's okay that I tossed this here. Couldn't find anywhere to toss it in the forums, and would like some feedback even though I made this in like 24 hours. It's got an online multiplayer component too, so there's that.

Installation InstructionsGo here to download BYOND, the game’s engine tool – Byond.comCreate an account if you want.Once installed, open the .zip folder that the game is stored in.Double-click on the BYOND Executable (orange monitor icon)---So, there you have it. It's essentially that silly childhood game that most of us should have some experience with playing on our house furniture. I made it in like 24 hours time and decided I'd love to hear what some of you have to say about it. All criticism welcomed, as long as it's you know...constructive. That being said, the multiplayer component is a tad finicky.

]]>Noobtoob Modcast Episode 050 - End of the Year Awardshttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/10314/noobtoob-modcast-episode-050-end-of-the-year-awards
Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:08:38 +1100Sunflower10314@/forum/discussions#50, the End of the Year Awards.

Since we're still a day away from release, we'd like to have you all post up what you feel are your awards for these categories, as well as guess some of ours. Some of the categories (that haven't been polled about on Noobtoob yet) are:

Single-Serving Award - What game did you complete, and was wonderful...once? No plans to go back to it ever again.

Late to the Party Award - What game did you pick up this year that didn't come out this year, that was the best damn thing you've played?

Best Soundtrack Award - What game had the best music, in your opinion? Burnout Paradise for the inclusion of "Girlfriend" will not be considered...except by Sun.

Best Character Award - Who was the best character of 2008? Main, or supporting.

Fan Service Award - What game catered most to the fans of the particular genre or IP? What was made expressly to put joy in your hearts?

Best Graphics Award - Which game absolutely WOWED you this year? What surprised you at what it could do on-screen?

Cutest Game Award - What game had the absolutely most adorable characters?

Best Buddy Award - Which game had the best co-operative experience?

Best Game We Didn't Play Award - What game did you not pick up but couldn't help hearing SO many good things about? Did you neglect it? Did you not have enough money? Why did you not play it?

Most Difficult Game Award - What game had you puzzled or stuck, in a situation you will never emerge from? What game was unrelentingly impossible?

Best Wow Moment Award - What one moment in a game made you almost drop your controller and say WOWWWWWWWW!

Best Thinking Game Award - Which game had ingenious puzzles or methods to be victorious, but were still the best? Not the most ingenious puzzle award, but which game did thinking best?

Worst Timing Award - What game came out at possibly the worst possible time for its release?

What the Fuck Is This Shit Award - Throw your controller in a fit of rage? What game made you FUCKING IRATE enough to break a disc in half this year?

Staying Power Award - What game did you continue to come back to time and time again this year? What game's charms will never wane?

Broken Toy Award - What didn't work as advertised? What's useless to you?

Guilty Pleasure Award - What do you play in secret and LOVE, but won't tell others?

And of course, the one to guess what the hosts have picked...Their top three Games of the Year. In order, no less!

Just an FYI, all three of us have NOT been talking about our GotY selections, so it'll be a surprise to all of us. We'll see you Friday - have a great time not only posting your own opinions on the above awards, but also for guessing the Modcast GotY choices!

Well that's all of them so far! I want to keep a rate of about 1-2 post per day, so be sure to check this post regularly! Thanks guys!]]>Manio Plays: Penumbra Black Plaguehttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24468/manio-plays-penumbra-black-plague
Thu, 30 May 2013 17:16:21 +1000Manio24468@/forum/discussions[CENTER][youtube]WQgh22YHClM[/youtube]Part 1[/CENTER]]]>Games Only Special - Xbox One (XBONE) Discussionhttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24461/games-only-special-xbox-one-xbone-discussion
Fri, 24 May 2013 07:35:40 +1000Sunflower24461@/forum/discussionsWe started talking about it on GOP88 and decided to make it separate as a lot of people are burned out on XBONE talk, so...here it is if you want it. Nice and separated.]]>Games Only 88 - RE: Revelations, Reus, Metro: LL, Strike Suit Zerohttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24460/games-only-88-re-revelations-reus-metro-ll-strike-suit-zero
Fri, 24 May 2013 07:33:49 +1000Sunflower24460@/forum/discussionshttp://traffic.libsyn.com/gamesonly/GOP88_Audio.mp3]]>Games Only 86 - Fuse, Mars: War Logs, Phantasmagoria 2http://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24444/games-only-86-fuse-mars-war-logs-phantasmagoria-2
Fri, 10 May 2013 06:05:45 +1000Sunflower24444@/forum/discussionshttp://traffic.libsyn.com/gamesonly/GOP86_Audio.mp3]]>Games Only 85 - Soul Sacrifice, Far Cry Blood Dragon, StarDrivehttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24436/games-only-85-soul-sacrifice-far-cry-blood-dragon-stardrive
Fri, 03 May 2013 06:54:10 +1000Sunflower24436@/forum/discussionshttp://traffic.libsyn.com/gamesonly/GOP85_Audio.mp3]]>Games Only 84 - Monaco, Don't Starve, Knife of Dunwallhttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24432/games-only-84-monaco-don039t-starve-knife-of-dunwall
Fri, 26 Apr 2013 07:23:36 +1000Sunflower24432@/forum/discussionshttp://traffic.libsyn.com/gamesonly/GOP84_Audio.mp3

NOTE: I'm not on the show, I'm about 30 mins in and the Monaco discussion about what I did is basically:

Twitch.tv/CyberMousey]]>Hitome De Game Live! CyberMinnie's Let' Playhttp://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24401/hitome-de-game-live-cyberminnie039s-let039-play
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:03:32 +1100cybermousey24401@/forum/discussionsvia www.twitch.tv/CyberMousey]]>Hitome De Game Live plays (test run) 6PM EST 3/18http://noobtoob.com/forum/discussion/24398/hitome-de-game-live-plays-test-run-6pm-est-318
Mon, 18 Mar 2013 04:18:15 +1100cybermousey24398@/forum/discussionsMousey will be live streaming tonight from 6PM EST till whenever on http://www.twitch.tv/cybermousey. Not sure what he will be playing yet, might be something new, might be something he was in the middle of... but if you have a request for the non-average gamer put it in now or twit it to us.